Spiced Carrot and Walnut Cake with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

I don’t know about you, but I’m in the mood for some comfort food. This carrot cake certainly provides comfort in its old fashioned familiar goodness. It’s like being enveloped in a loving hug from your grandmother and being told that everything is going to be OK. This cake is perfect with a cuppa in the afternoon when you need a bit of a ‘pick me up’.

This recipe comes from one of my favourite cookbooks, Monday Morning Cooking Club, though as usual I always tweek the ingredients a bit to suit my tastes. The result is a super moist and light cake which isn’t too sweet.

Spiced carrot and walnut cake

2 1/2 cups plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups caster sugar

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil

4 eggs

3 cups grated carrot (2 medium carrots)

1/2 cup crushed pineapple (230g tin)

200g chopped walnuts (peacans can be used instead)

carrot cake ingredients

Lemon cream cheese frosting

250g cream cheese @ room temperature

50g unsalted butter @ room temperature

2 tblsp fresh lemon juice

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 cups icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F and grease a large 26cm angel cake tin, or kugeluf tin. Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarb soda, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl. In another bowl, whisk together the sugar, oil and eggs until frothy.

Mix the two bowl ingredients together. Once combined, stir through the grated carrot, crushed pineapple and walnuts. Bake in the oven for 50-55 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

While the cake is cooling in the tin, make the lemon cream cheese frosting.

Using a mixer, blend together the cream cheese, butter, lemon juice and vanilla extract until it is light and fluffy. Gradually add the icing sugar 1/2 cup at a time.

Once the cake is completely cool, take it out of the tin and smother it in frosting. This cake does serve a lot of people, so unless you are planning on feeding the masses, I’d store half in the freezer.

And just in case you think that my kitchen is always pristine while I’m making my cake creations…here’s my kitchen floor…my girls have a lot of fun creating plastic container towers and pushing them over while I’m baking.